This update includes new calibration and hardware parameter update buttons, so that these data can be easily changed, but are remembered between sessions without the need for re-entry. The .MAT files where these data are stored are now also saved into any output folder for ease fo future reusability.
Black is a GUI written using the Matlab© GUIDE© package and is designed to process .SPE files collected from an Princeton Instruments Acton spectrograph for the determination of temperature during double sided laser heating experiments in the diamond anvil cell. The software is designed around the laser heating system in the School of Earth Sciences, University of Bristol.
The software can operate in both a live mode (during an experiment) where it will automatically process new files as they arrive or a post-processing mode, where files within a folder can be processed rapidly and sequentially. The software can process data from both sides of the sample simultaneously, assuming the incandescent light from each side is spatially separated but focussed onto the same CCD chip by the spectrometer.
The software provides the user with plots of temperature cross-sections as well as the peak temperature from both sides as a function of elapsed time. Several optional subroutines are available, including boxcar smoothing, temperature correction based on chromatic aberration, error minimisation based on wavelength window optimisation and an auto-rotation feature that can correct for the incident light being non-orthogonal to the spectrometer slit.
Future improvements include: making the software as hardware independent as possible, improving the commenting and efficiency of the code and writing a complete README file with operational instructions.